


six impossible things before breakfast

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Future Fic, Gen, Next Generation, Partnership, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 16:56:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: There’s not a kid who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen who doesn’t know all about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Miguel doesn’t know that he believes half of it now that he’s older—dude running around in horns, jumping off buildings, fighting off hordes of bad guys and saving the city single-handedly—it all sounds a little far-fetched.[Or: Daredevil might be gone but that doesn't mean Hell's Kitchen doesn't still need someone on the side of the angels.]





	six impossible things before breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Who'd have thought that Brett Mahoney would feature so heavily in my DD!Bingo stories this time around? 
> 
> Also, barely there hints of Matt/Foggy because that's who I am. 
> 
> Written for the prompt: A cold day in hell.

Mahoney’s got that look on his face when he walks in the room. Miguel’s seen it before and knows it means he’s about to hear it.

“What was it this time Cervantes?” Sargent Mahoney asks, tossing an ice pack in his direction. Miguel catches it easily, doesn’t even wince as the movement pulls at his shoulder.

“I told you Ramiro and his boys were messing with Mr. G.” Miguel answers, careful to keep anything like reproach out of his voice. He’s speaking to a senior officer. If Miguel ever manages to make it out of the Academy he’s going to need the Sargent on his side, it would be stupid to burn a bridge before he’s even halfway across the distance. Ma always did tell him not to be stupid.  

Sarge sighs, one hand still resting on the door knob as he surveys the room. Miguel already knows how this plays out. He gets another demerit on his record unless he can convince Mahoney otherwise.

“I know,” Sarge answers and he kind of disappointment, and not just in Miguel. “I set extra patrols by the store front and I spoke with Mr. Gutierrez myself. He’s not interested in talking to the police and we can’t force him to. As it stands, our hands are tied.” Sarge’s eyes fall to Miguel’s bruised knuckles and he resists the urge to hide his hands.

He’s not exactly ashamed of what he’s done.

“C’mon,” Sarge says after a long beat, stepping back from the door. “There’s someone I’ve been wanting to introduce you to.”

-

It’s pissing rain outside, makes it nearly impossible to look out of the windshield and keep track of where Sargent Mahoney is taking them.

Miguel’s spent his whole life in the Kitchen, likes to think he knows it inside-out, backwards and forward, but he’s still thrown for a spin when Sarge pulls up behind the Margaret Grace Rec Center. Miguel’s high school wrestling team used to have their home games here, but he didn’t exactly frequent it growing up besides that. It’s always been around though, almost as long as Miguel can remember its been organizing block parties and little league games and connecting people to legal services when they don’t have the means to go elsewhere. Some people say its been the saving grace of the Kitchen, but to Miguel it just looks like another worn down building, held together with determination and spite, like almost everything else in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Just this way.” Sarge says, guiding Miguel through the back door. Miguel remembers the front desk, all brightly lit and scrubbed clean, papered with fliers. The back room isn’t quite so cluttered, the paint on the wall could use a touch up, but there’s a bulletin board a few feet in that’s buried under pictures of patrons past and present. Miguel’s eyes rove over it quickly, looking for any familiar faces—there’s more than a few.

“Signing me up for community service?” Miguel asks, bruised hands buried in his jacket pockets, shoes squeaking on the wood flooring as he follows the Sarge further into the building.

Sargent Mahoney chuckles softly under his breath. “My whole life I’ve wanted to serve my community. My ma raised me to give back, y’know. I made my way through the Academy, made beat cop, worked my way up to Detective…” Miguel knows. The whole Kitchen knows. Sargent Brett Mahoney is the stuff NYPD legends are made of. Helped take down a whole city of dirty cops working for a criminal kingpin. “The thing about growing up here is that you never forget about all the people the law didn’t or doesn’t help. It eats at you, you know. Wearing the uniform, knowing people see you as something other than what you are, just because of the badge on your chest. Worse part, is that they’re not even wrong, not all the way. Some days it feels like for every good cop you know there’s two who are rotten to the core. You can’t grow up here and be blind to the truth: the law can’t help everyone the way they need.”

Miguel’s stomach twinges behind his navel and he doesn’t know what Sarge is trying to say but he knows what he means. He’s lost a couple of friends over his choice to go into the Academy, knows his own mother would have disapproved. She never liked guns. But he’s always wanted to help. It seemed like the best way to do it.

“You’ve got a lot of heart, Cervantes. I know it’s in the right place. But you need to know what you can do with the word officer in front of your name and what you can’t, and decide if you can live with it or else it just makes it all the easier to say yes when someone comes around offering you the opportunity to bend the rules.”

“You think I’d let some shitbag buy me off—”

Sargent Mahoney shakes his head. “I’m just being honest. I’ve know a lot of kids like you—” Miguel bristles at the sarge’s choice of words, “And I’ve seen what happens to them when they come up against a wall they can’t climb.” They’ve come to the end of the hall and Miguel looks around, wounded and confused and itching to fight.

Sarge nods, but it isn’t directed at Miguel, neither is his softly spoken, “Can’t believe I’m doing this.” Then he opens the door.

On the other side of the door is a boxing gym, complete with the ring, the floor mats and bags hanging from the exposed rafters. Miguel’s never been in here before and he takes a second just to study it before he focuses on the only other person in the room.

The guy—old, older than Sarge from the look of it, grey in his hair and in his beard, face wrinkled and lean, but his arms are strong, Miguel can see it in the swings he takes. “Thought you were gonna change your mind.” The guy says, sweat on his brow when he walks over. He doesn’t exactly smile when he shakes Sargent Mahoney’s hand, but there’s familiarity between them.

“Don’t make me regret this, Murdock.” Sargent Mahoney says before nods towards Miguel.

“Miguel Cervantes, this is Matt Murdock.” The name rings familiar in Miguel’s ears, but he can’t figure out where he’s heard it until Murdock offers Miguel his hand but he doesn’t meet his eye.

He’s seen a guy, same build, eyes hidden behind dark-lens glasses standing behind D.A. Nelson in a couple of pictures, but this isn’t exactly the kind of place Miguel ever expected to meet anyone he saw on the front page of the Bulletin.

“Nice to meet you, sir.” He says, remembering his best Sunday school manners. Murdock grins at that.

“Likewise.” He says, shaking Miguel’s hand firmly, his dark eyes unfocused and staring somewhere behind Miguel’s ear.

Oh, Miguel realizes a moment later, a delayed lightbulb going off over his head. He feels like a dick for being surprised that Sarge brought him to rec center to meet a blind man.

Sargent Mahoney clears his throat. “You’ve heard of Daredevil?” He asks Miguel, looking a little askance.

Miguel’s eyebrow rises before he’s even given his face permission to react.

There’s not a kid who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen who doesn’t know all about the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Miguel doesn’t know that he believes half of it now that he’s older—dude running around in horns, jumping off buildings, fighting off hordes of bad guys and saving the city single-handed—it all sounds a little far-fetched.

Sarge points at Murdock. “Allow me to introduce you to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

-

Miguel Cervantes is gone but Matt can still smell him: sweat and fear and anger. He knows his way around a fight, even with the injuries leftover from the last one. He definitely has potential.

Matt picks up his towel and starts towards his office, hears the quiet creak of Brett’s uniform regulated shoes across the floor as he follows after.

In his office, Brett falls into the empty seat across from Matt’s desk, sits silently as Matt ducks low to pull open the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and pulling out the bottle of whiskey Foggy gave him Christmas.

“How’s the family?” Matt asks, pouring them both a drink. Brett accepts his glass, “Ray’s got it in her head she wants to apply to a west coast school. Liv isn’t taking it too well.”

Matt chuckles, sips his drink.

Brett shifts in his seat. “Foggy okay with you doing this?”

Matt sets his drink down, can practically feel the moment the liquid in the glass goes almost completely still. “Not like I’m going back out on the streets.” As much as it pains him, Matt knows he’s past his prime. “Told him to think of it like mentorship.” It isn’t so different from some of the other programs and services the center offers these days.

Brett finishes his drink, sets his glass down on the tabletop. “You started young right, with all the parkour stuff? Think Cervantes can still pick up your footwork?”

Matt almost laughs. He’d always thought Hell would freeze over before decorated officer of the law Brett Mahoney brought him a cadet to train into a new vigilante for the Kitchen.

“Maybe not, but I can help him work out his own.” It's been a long time now, but Matt still remembers Stick, the lessons he drilled into Matt's muscles, merciless and efficient. Matt has no intention of repeating history. 

Brett nods, silent for a moment before adding, “He’s a good kid. Good head on his shoulders, good heart, just, wants the world to be a different kind of place. Doesn’t always let his head catch up before his fist start swinging.”

Matt grins. “Sounds familiar.”

 


End file.
